Cataclysm - Build 12479 - Warrior

Warrior

Leap through the air and slam down on the enemy target, causing 100% weapon damage to all enemies within 5 yards, stunning them for 2 sec, and increasing the time between their attacks by 20% for 10 sec.8-25 yd range, Instant, 2 min cooldown

Whenever you achieve maximum Rage you enter an Enraged state, increasing damage caused by all abilities by 50% and increasing Rage cost by 15%. This effect is immediately cancelled when your Rage total drops below 30.Instant

Leap through the air and slam down on the enemy target, causing 100% weapon damage to all enemies within 5 yards, stunning them for 2 sec, and increasing the time between their attacks by 20% for 10 sec.8-25 yd range, Instant, 2 min cooldown

Whenever you achieve maximum Rage you enter an Enraged state, increasing damage caused by all abilities by 50% and increasing Rage cost by 15%. This effect is immediately cancelled when your Rage total drops below 30.Instant

You regenerate 30% of your total health over 10 sec. This ability requires an Enrage effect, consumes all Enrage effects and prevents any from affecting you for the full duration.15 Rage, Instant, 3 min cooldown

Attempt to finish off a wounded foe, causing [ 25% of AP + 10 ] physical damage and consumes up to 20 additional rage to deal up to [ 50% of AP - 1 ] additional damage. Only usable on enemies that have less than 20% health.10 Rage, 5 yd range, Instant

Instantly attack the target causing [ 45% of AP ] damage. Can only be used within 20 sec after you kill an enemy that yields experience or honor. Damage is based on your attack power. If used after a killing blow, will heal you for 20% of your maximum health.5 yd range, Instant

Sunders the target's armor, reducing it by 4% per Sunder Armor and causes a high amount of threat. Threat increased by attack power. Can be applied up to 3 times. Lasts 30 sec.15 Rage, 5 yd range, Instant

[Instantly Whirlwind all nearby targets and for the next 6 sec you will perform a whirlwind attack every 1 sec. While under the effects of Bladestorm, you can move but cannot perform any other abilities but you do not feel pity or remorse or fear and you cannot be stopped unless killed./]25 Rage, Instant, 1.5 min cooldown

Your Charge ability is now usable while in combat, but the cooldown on Charge is increased by 5 sec. Following a Charge, your next Slam or Mortal Strike has an additional 25% chance to critically hit if used within 10 sec.

Gives you a chance to generate an additional rage point when you deal melee damage with a weapon.[/ Effect occurs more often than Unbridled Wrath (Rank 1)./ Effect occurs more often than Unbridled Wrath (Rank 2).]

Increases the critical strike chance of your Devastate ability by [5%/10%/15%] and when your Devastate or Revenge ability deals damage it has a [10%/20%/30%] chance of refreshing the cooldown of your Shield Slam ability and reducing its cost by 100% for 5 sec.

Focus your protective gaze on a group or raid target, reducing their damage taken by 3%. In addition, each time they are hit by an attack your Taunt cooldown is refreshed and you gain Vengeance as if the damage was done to you (NYI). Lasts 30 min. This effect can only be on one target at a time.

Reduces the chance you'll be critically hit by melee attacks by [3%/6%]. In addition, when you block, dodge or parry an attack you have a [50%/100%] chance to become Enraged, increasing physical damage done by [5%/10%] for 12 sec.

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will bring with it
several changes to class talents and abilities. Here you will get
a glimpse into some of the changes we have in store for the
warrior. The information you're about to read is not
complete, and is only meant to act as a preview for some of the
exciting new things to come.

New Warrior
Abilities

Inner Rage (Level
81): Whenever the character reaches a full 100 Rage, he or
she will gain a buff that causes attacks to consume 50% more Rage
and do 15% more damage for a short amount of time. This is a
passive ability so it won't need to be activated by the
player. The goal for this ability is to provide a benefit for
hitting max Rage instead of it feeling like a penalty. However, we
also don't want warriors to feel like they're supposed
to pool Rage and do nothing until they hit 100, so we'll be
closely monitoring how this plays out during the beta testing, and
making adjustments as needed.

Gushing Wound (Level
83): This ability will apply a bleed effect to the target.
If the target moves, the bleed gains an extra stack and refreshes
its duration, up to a maximum of three stacks. The ability is
currently planned to have no cooldown, cost 10 Rage, and have a
9-second duration. Gushing Wound is designed to be weaker than
Rend with one stack, but better with three stacks, which will be
reached when fighting a moving target.

Heroic Leap
(Level 85): This ability makes the character leap at their
target and apply the Thunder Clap ability to all enemies in the
area when they land. Heroic Leap will be usable in Battle Stance
and shares a cooldown with Charge, but the Juggernaut and
Warbringer talents will allow Heroic Leap to be used in any stance
and possibly while in combat. The cooldown for this ability might
be longer than the Charge ability, but it will also apply a stun
effect so you can make sure the target will still be there when
you land.

Changes to Abilities and
Mechanics

In addition to
learning new abilities, you'll see changes to other abilities
and mechanics with which you're already familiar. This list
and the summary of talent changes below it are by no means
comprehensive, but they should give you a good sense of what we
intend for each spec.

Heroic Strike will no longer be an
"on next swing" attack, as we are removing this
mechanic in Cataclysm. To keep the niche of Heroic Strike as a
Rage dump, it will become an instant attack, but will cost
between 10 and 30 Rage. This ability will not be usable until
you have 10 Rage, but if you have more than 10, it will
consume up to 30, adding additional damage for each point of
Rage consumed above the base 10. Other abilities, such as
Cleave, Execute, and Maul (for druids) will work similarly.
The goal is to provide players with an option where if you
can't afford the Rage, you don't push the button,
but if you have excess Rage, you can push it a
lot.

Battle Shout, Commanding Shout, and possibly
Demoralizing Shout will work more like the death knight's
Horn of Winter ability. Specifically, these shouts will cost
no resources, generate rage in addition to their current
effects, and be on a short cooldown.

Whirlwind will
hit an unlimited number of targets, but only for 50% of weapon
damage. The intent is for this ability to be used in
multi-target scenarios and not on single
targets.

Overall, heals cast by players in Cataclysm
will be a lower number relative to players' health than
the current game. So to make the Mortal Strike debuff less
mandatory but still useful in PvP, Mortal Strike will reduce
healing by only 20%. All equivalent debuffs, including the
Shadow priest and Frost mage debuffs, will be for 20% less
healing. At the moment we aren't considering giving this
debuff to anyone else, though we will certainly consider PvP
utility for historically under-represented specs that use
other mechanics.

Sunder Armor will be reduced to three
stacks instead of five, and still provide only a 4% reduction
in armor per stack. We want to make this debuff easier to
apply and less of a damage swing when it falls
off.

New Talents and Talent
Changes

The Furious Sundering talent in the
Fury tree will make the Sunder Armor ability cause 25/50%
weapon damage and reduce the threat generated by
50/100%.

The Mace and Poleaxe Specialization talents
in the Arms tree will be removed. These provided just passive
stats, which are not the kinds of talents we want to design in
the future. We will keep the Sword Specialization talent, but
it will be changed to a talent that applies to all types of
weapons.

As a Fury talent, Booming Voice will increase
the Rage generated by shouts.

While we like how
Titan's Grip plays, we recognize some warriors liked the
Fury tree because of the really fast swings that dual-wielding
one-handed weapons could provide. Therefore, we're
planning to try out a talent called Single-Minded Fury that is
parallel to Titan's Grip and will provide a large boost
to the damage of a pair of one-handed weapons.

Several
talents that reduce the Rage cost of abilities will be changed
to focus on increased damage for those abilities
instead.

The new Arms talent called Disarming Nature
will make successful disarms cause the target to cower in fear
for 5/10 seconds.

Another new Arms talent called Blitz
will make the Charge ability hit for extra damage. The amount
will possibly vary depending on the distance
travelled.

Bonus Swing: This is
similar to the Sword Specialization talent that is currently in
the game, but Bonus Swing will work on all attacks and with all
weapons. You have a chance to proc a free, instant weapon swing
that hits for 50% damage.

Fury

Melee
Damage

Melee Haste

Enrage
Intensity

Enrage Intensity:
Every benefit of being enraged is increased. This includes doing
more damage/healing/ etc. from abilities like Bloodrage, Death
Wish, Enrage, Berserker Rage, and Enraged Regeneration.

Protection

Damage
Reduction

Vengeance

Critical Block
Chance

Critical Block Chance: As
we mentioned in the stat changes preview, block rating is changing
to a chance to block 30% of a melee swing's damage.
Protection warriors have a chance that the block will be a
critical block and block for 60% of a melee swing's damage
instead. There will likely be talents available to push the amount
blocked even higher.

Vengeance: This is a
mechanic to ensure that tank damage (and therefore threat)
doesn't fall behind as damage-dealing classes improve their
gear during the course of the expansion. All tanking specs will
have Vengeance as their second talent tree passive bonus. Whenever
a tank gets hit, Vengeance will give them a stacking attack power
buff equal to 5% of the damage done, up to a maximum of 10% of the
character's un-buffed health. For boss encounters, we expect
that tanks will always have the attack power bonus equal to 10% of
their health. The 5% and 10% bonuses assume 51 talent points have
been put into the Protection tree. These values will be smaller at
lower levels. Remember, you only get this bonus if you have spent
the most talent points in the Protection tree, so you won't
see Arms or Fury warriors running around with it. Vengeance will
let us continue to make tank gear more or less the way we do today
. there will be some damage-dealing stats, but mostly
survival-oriented stats. Druids typically have more damage-dealing
stats even on their tanking gear, so their Vengeance benefit may
be smaller, but overall the goal is for all four tanks do about
the same damage when tanking.

We hope you enjoyed this
preview, and we're looking forward to hearing your thoughts
and feedback on these additions and changes. Please keep in mind
that this information represents a work in progress and is subject
to change as development on Cataclysm continues.

Blue Posts

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

Heroic
LeapI think too many of you are focusing on the
Thunder Clap portion of Heroic Leap. Imagine instead the tooltip
said "Leap into combat, crushing all enemies within the
landing area for massive damage and slowing their attack speed for
10 sec."

[...] it will do massive damage and
apply the Thunder Clap debuff. That's like saying Bladestorm
is just Whirlwind with a little CC immunity thrown in, so why do
we need another Whirlwind?

[...] On the topic of
Heroic Leap, understand that these are not patch notes.
They're previews. These abilities have not been extensively
tested yet, and to be totally honest, several of them haven't
even been implemented yet. We wanted to share with you the
direction we're headed in while there was still plenty of
time for feedback and iteration. While we like all of the new
abilities we're discussing, there's certainly a chance
not all of them will make it to ship.

If Heroic Leap
needs to be used out of combat or in different stances or to not
share a cooldown with Charge in order to be awesome, then
that's certainly the kind of thing we're willing to
try.

It's a struggle with previews like this to
provide enough context (things like limitations and even numbers)
so you get the idea of where we're going with a spell or
mechanic without getting everyone over-focused on those details.
(As another example, warriors dismissing Inner Rage because they
think the numbers aren't tuned perfectly.)

At the
moment, we're focused on making fun abilities. As the beta
progresses, we'll worry more about the tuning. (Source)

Inner
RageInner Rage isn't supposed to feel kiss /
curse. It's supposed to feel like a limit break or similar
video game analogy. When I get to 100 rage, I go into overdrive
mode and cause even more damage. Rather than hitting max rage
being a problem (because I'm wasting resources I could be
gaining) it's something fun instead.

We put in
some of that extra explanation because we don't want warriors
to feel like the right way to play is to do nothing until they
have 100 rage and then start having fun. It's supposed to
feel like getting a string of crits or eating a big hit or
something translate into higher damage for a short time. (Source)

Demo Shout
changesActually we changed it to a percent physical
damage reduction instead of attack power reduction. (Source)

VengeanceVengeance is based on damage actually
taken (physical and spell). This means it might take a bit to get
stacked up to the max value, but it generally will get up there on
longer fights and can even stay there in between pulls if you pull
quickly.

Remember, the problem we're trying to
solve here is sustained damage and threat. We're not as
worried about mobs sticking to you initially because you have
plenty of tools to handle that now (including telling the mages
they need to wait for half a second). Yes, your AP might start out
a little lower if you get a string of avoidance, but with lower
avoidance in Cataclysm, that is probably less of a problem as
well.

Protection TreeAs a tank, you
don't need to worry about nerfs to Sunder Armor and Demo
Shout. We'll still tune the bosses to whatever damage we
think they need to do. You don't need to worry about suddenly
becoming less survivable or generating less threat.

We
changed Sunder Armor because the debuff was too massive, meaning
realistically you couldn't raid without it. (Perhaps you
still can't, but it's closer.)

We changed
Demo Shout because it was confusing. Nobody knows how much attack
power a creature has, and we found that many players
underestimated what a massive damage reduction Demo Shout actually
provided.

I can understand PvP concerns of changing
these abilities. I'm less sympathetic if you're worried
you'll lose your spot to another class because of them, since
we're really trying to design a game where you aren't
brought along just for your awesome buff.

As far as
other Protection warrior concerns go, you're welcome to bring
up issues you think that the talent tree has. Our general feedback
from warriors is they really like the Protection tree and
playstyle (with a few exceptions, like Heroic Strike and perhaps
Vigilance) and it was really the tuning relative to other tanks
that bothered them. We try not to offer too many changes just for
the sake of change (though a few can be fun, and there will be
some in your talent tree). (Source)

Threat
generationI understand the appeal of threat
management from a logical sense, and your point about it being
engaging to everyone is compelling, but in application we find
that it's one of those things that a lot of players just
don't find fun. The UI doesn't do a great job of
explaining threat, and even if we could build a UI to portray it
in a more exciting way (which to be fair, we probably could)
it's still a pretty intangible concept compared to damage and
healing so I'm not sure it would feel great even then.

Many DPS players don't like the mechanic that
there's this higher level of damage they could achieve if
only they weren't constantly being throttled by this one dude
up in front. It often ends up feeling not like the group is
overcoming a challenge together, but that the dude in front needs
to get his act together. It just makes tanks feel weak. When the
raid dies because the boss hammered the tank, then that feels
cooperative because it's the raid vs. the boss. When the raid
wipes because the warlock got aggro, then it feels like it's
the tank vs. the warlock (or maybe the raid vs. the warlock or the
raid vs. the tank).

We always see a lot of negative
feedback from tanks when they feel like they can't hold
aggro. To be sure some of that is relative when the warrior sees
the paladin generate more threat, but it's also a pretty
constant source of friction for tanks when they feel like they
don't have the tools they need for the job. You can write
that off as casuals who just want free epics, but I think we see
"we can't generate enough threat" feedback more
than we see "please nerf this boss; he's too hard"
feedback.

Really, we're talking about relative
degrees though. No warrior tank should be able to Thunder Clap and
then go get a beer because they're going to then maintain
aggro no matter what. In the situations where that happens today I
think it's because of overtuned abilities like Tricks or
Misdirect (or sometimes tank abilities themselves).

Perhaps put more succinctly, a lot of tank players just seem to
find the survival game more fun than the threat game. (Source)

Unending
FuryThe kinds of talents we want to eliminate are
the ones that say "You do 5% more damage." Unending Fury
is pretty close to that because it buffs the attacks Fury warriors
use the most. On the other hand, Flurry is a pretty unambiguous
dps increase, but it does it in a way that's a little more
interesting. A talent tree that didn't buff damage of a dps
spec at all would feel lame. We just want to free up enough talent
points that you can get more of the fun utility ones. (Source)

1H/2H Dual
Wielding and rage generation/damage gapAre you
talking about Arms vs. Fury? That's not that hard. Arms can
have a talent to let them generate more rage with a two-hander or
require less rage for their attacks.

Are you talking
about 2H Fury vs. 1H Fury? The Single-Minded Fury talent could
literally say "Your one-handed weapons do damage as if they
were two-handed weapons." The talent gives us a dial and we
can tune it up or down for whatever we need.

It's
much easier to make dual-wielding one-handers and dual-wielding
two-handers do equitable damage than it is to make dual-wielding
one-handers and using a single two-hander do equitable damage, if
that makes sense. (Source)

Healing
reduction effects in Cataclysm"All equivalent
debuffs" means if you have the debuff today, you will have it
in Cataclysm, but at 20% healing received. To avoid further
confusion, we are talking about Mortal Strike, Furious Strikes,
Wound Poison, Aimed Shot, Permafrost and Improved Mind Blast.

We are also strongly considering having all of these
effect cause the same debuff, called Mortal Wounds, which is a
physical effect and therefore undispellable. This allows the
behavior to be more consistent regardless of who is applying it
and lets us consider things like how easy it should be to dispel
poisons (since Mortal Wounds would not be affected).

Heals will be smaller and health pools will be larger in
Cataclysm, so we don't expect Mortal Wounds to feel as
mandatory as it does today, but this is clearly the kind of thing
that will require a lot of playtesting and feedback. (Source)

Warrior Preview Q&AQ: Will the rotation for a Fury Warrior just be Bloodthirst
and Slam with Heroic Strike to burn off rage?A: We think Fury is going to end up needing another
attack in there for single-target fights. Furious Sundering was
intended more as having to Sunder being less of a penalty, but at
only 3 stacks, it may not end up being a big deal and we don.t
want Fury to feel like they have to purchase a talent that they
may not always use. We don.t want Whirlwind to be a good button
against single targets however. It essentially gets .free. damage
against groups of targets when it.s effective at using against
single targets. It.s okay if warriors still do more damage in
fights where they can use Cleave and similar attacks often, but
right now it.s too extreme.

Q: Are one-handed Fury
warriors going to be competing with rogues for one-handed
weapons?A: This is unlikely. Rogues and
shaman will want one-handers with Agility, while warriors and
death knights will want them with Strength. I won.t be surprised
when one of these classes picks up the other.s weapon as it could
be an upgrade simply based on the damage, but it won.t be
optimal.

Q: Why are warriors not getting some kind
of AoE tanking tool?A: We think the newly
buffed Thunder Clap plus Shockwave are sufficient abilities for
AoE tanking. The design of Vengeance should make sure that threat
generation doesn.t start to slip behind as the dps characters gear
up. It.s not our intention that tanks face a constant struggle to
generate enough threat, even in group situations, but we also
don.t want threat to be totally irrelevant either. The danger for
tanking too many creatures should also be tank death not threat
management.

Q: Is only Sunder Armor being
changed?A: Rogue Expose Armor and other
abilities that apply a similar debuff are being changed
accordingly. They will all provide the same debuff at 12% armor
reduction.

Q: What about rage loss when changing
stances?A: We still want the act of changing
stances to require more consideration than just clicking two
buttons to use the ability you want. One idea we are going to
explore is that you don.t lose rage when you change stances, but
you won.t gain additional rage for a short period of time after
changing. This lets you say swap to do an Execute without losing
your rage bar, but still keeps the idea that shifting constantly
comes with inherent efficiency risks.

Q: Is the
intent of Gushing Wound that warriors constantly ask for
targets to be kited around?A: No, it.s
intended to be a bonus when you.re in an encounter where the
target either moves around a lot (Ex. BONNNNE STORMMMM-ing
Marrowgar) or just has to be moved around a lot (say Lich King).
Warriors shouldn.t have the expectation of forcing every PvE
opponent to move but it would be entertaining to watch this (from
a third party perspective).

Heroic Leap feels very.. Unheroic. A 3 minute cooldown for an AoE stun and only 100% weapon damage? I 'unno, for that long of a cooldown, I was hoping for something more. Plus it says enemy target, which means you can't lead, or hit in the middle of a scattered group. *sadface*

I like getting mortal strike at level 10 a lot. As melee characters I often find the first 20-30 levels are boring to do as you usually just sit and auto attack, especially as a warrior as the only thing you really have is heroic strike. This is all changing now though due to this update and the fact that heroic strike is going to be an instant cast now rather than a hit on next swing.

As for prot, my main spec, it looks slightly like some of our very important passive talents have been removed? I think this was the intention of the new trees but do we have some kind of passive replacement which just don't appear as talents or something?

Blood and Thunder... wow I want that so much. Rend one guy, thunder clap and BAM everyone has rend ticking away. Man oh man that is gonna be sweet. Hey look I just DOT all this trash in two moves. How d'you like that Mr Paladin, huh HUH????

Field dressing looks pretty useful aswell. Hold the Line, well I just like the name of that ability and the effect goes really well with it.

If I am not missing something obvious....fury wont have to stay in berzerker stance any longer since 1) WW isnt single target and 2) the strength bonus from the stance is removed. It will all be about the 10% arp vs the 20% less threat,3% crit and +5% inc damage. Still GC in US forums said they bring something like the old attack that requires enrage back so we have to wait.

Have to say, I'm pretty unhappy with the Vigilance nerf. I liked that I could pretty well muzzle a high-threat dps class to make them more manageable (i.e. Fire mages, Bladestorming warriors, etc.) I understand, that now that responsibility to manage aggro is on the DPS without it, but at the same time, most people fall back on the "Blame the tank" mentality.

That seems to be the new cookie cutter build for prot with some variations I guess, Concusion blow and Vigilance might be
better than Cruelty but as it stands now Vigilance more or less is not desirable and concussion blow is almost useless since devastate can pretty much replace it.

Improved Rend might also deserve a look in the future for prot since Blood and Thunder implies we'll be using it a lot.

That seems to be the new cookie cutter build for prot with some variations I guess, Concusion blow and Vigilance might be
better than Cruelty but as it stands now Vigilance more or less is not desirable and concussion blow is almost useless since devastate can pretty much replace it.

Improved Rend might also deserve a look in the future for prot since Blood and Thunder implies we'll be using it a lot.

You've got to wonder about the new Blood Craze for an effective health build, too. 10% chance on being hit to restore 7.5% health, with cataclysm stamina levels, and hearing that heals won't be for as large a proportion of our health pool.

It's not that some of the new abilities don't look cool, it just seems as if there aren't really any mandatory talents. GC said that blizz prefers to have a few good options.. there really doesn't appear to be any real alternatives, not to mention if you're looking to go pvp for Arms you can't realistically get piercing howl. I'm kind of excited to get skills early on, but a talent point every other level? Kind of a let down for those not close to being maxed out.